Rwandan Tobacco Millionaire Tribert Rujigiro Sues Kenyan Investment Bank For $570,000

Source from:  Forbes 06/16/2016

Tribert Rujigiro, a Rwandan tobacco tycoon and multi-millionaire, has reportedly filed a $570,000 suit against Kenyan investment bank, Dyer & Blair.

Rujigiro, who is the founder of Pan African Tobacco Group (PTG), Africa's largest indigenous manufacturer of tobacco products, is accusing the Kenyan investment bank of selling the shares he owned in publicly traded Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile telecom company, and failing to speedily pass on the proceeds of the sale to him.

In 2008, Rujigiro purchased 8.8 million shares in Safaricom through Dyer & Blair for Ksh 61.4 million, which at the time was equivalent to $1 million. He ordered Dyer & Blair to sell the shares in 2013 at the prevailing market rate, and the Investment bank fetched the sum of Sh85.7 million- which was equivalent to more than $1.1 million at the time. However, the bank withheld the sum for a period of 135 days, during which period the Kenyan shilling strengthened against the dollar- and that cost him a significant loss in dollar terms.

Rujigiro is claiming that he suffered substantial loss and is demanding that Dyer & Blair pays him damages for withholding the proceeds of the sale of his shares for 135 days, and for only paying him after fluctuations of the US dollar rate had adversely affected his returns.

The tobacco tycoon is claiming $577,000 in special damages, and has requested the court to award him an unstipulated amount in general damages claiming that he lost the opportunity to re-invest the gains of the share sale in the international stock market because of Dyer & Blair's decision to hold his funds.

But in a court filing, Dyer & Blair has explained that it withheld Rujigiro's funds to enable the bank comply with the Know Your Customer (KYC) obligations of Kenya's Capital Markets Authority (CMA), and said that it was forced to withhold Rujugiro's proceeds after learning that the tobacco millionaire had been exiled from Rwanda and that the Rwandan Government led by President Paul Kagame had confiscated several of his assets in Kigali over a series of crimes including tax evasion in Rwanda and possibly financing terrorism and war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The bank claimed that it had invited Rujigiro to its offices in Nairobi to answer some questions in line with the KYC policy, but the tobacco tycoon refused to show up. Enditem